Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting What's a Quartered Elk Weigh?

As indicated by the weights posted by a couple of coastal hunters, Roosevelt elk are a LOT bigger and heavier than Rocky Mountain elk.

I have pondered whether to post the weight of the heaviest Roosevelt bull I ever heard of, but think I will pass and skip being called a liar. FWIW it was NOT an average elk, but was huge in every dimension including antlers. A cousin killed it and since it was warm weather, took to a meat cutter where the skinned quarters were weighed on a butcher's scale. The butcher said, “That can't be right,” and weighed it again. In more than 20 years of weighing elk, this one was over 100 lbs. heavier than any he had weighed. The weight was comparable to a mature bull moose in the southern Interior of BC. My family has killed several Roosevelts with scale weights comparable to scale weights of southern moose.

I weigh and record the parts all the time for my own reference. I hunt in SW MT. Mature bull elk are about like this with hide off:

rear quarters: 65lbs
front quarters: 35 lbs
meat from frame: 80 lbs
skull: 25 lbs

These are skin off and hock off. Add about 10 lbs per quarter for skin (if my quarter has skin on it has extra to wrap around and protect the meat, so this figure might be high for you). I haven't witnessed much variation in weight of quarters in 6 pt bulls. The loose meat from the frame varies the most. Sometimes I lose a lot due to blood shot. This amount varies the most also for bigger/smaller animals, as some have a couple of inches of meat around the ribs and some are pretty lean. Often I de-bone one front it seems due to bullet damage, too. The skull obviously varies a lot as well but this figure is for a ~300" bull with skin/lower jaw removed (5 pt skull weighed 18 lbs for reference, 320" just under 30lbs). When you shoot a decent bull you should plan to hike out about 300 lbs if you keep the bone in the quarters, and I don't want to hike out de-boned meat for purposes of hanging/aging/identifying cuts.

I hope that helps.

I shot a big cow a couple days ago. We weighed the hind quarters to balance them for a llama load. We separate them at the ball joint and remove the lower leg. These weighed 44 lb. Most cow quarters will be in the 35 to 40lb range. This gal was the biggest I've shot since I got the llamas 9 years ago.

I have found Headwatermike's figure pretty darn close

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Couple guys in the shop at my new job killed a couple of thousand pound cows a couple weeks ago. 🙄

I’d of guessed them closer to 350 dressed from the pics but I guess they were more densely boned than normal elk.

Had a 5x5 bull weigh 528# at the processor, field dressed, skin on, head and legs off. Younger son killed cowzilla, huge, weighed 458# at the processor, skin on, field dressed, head and legs off. Oldest son took a cow, quartered, skin on the quarters with back straps weighed 168# at the processor..

When you guys say quarters do you mean legs?

Yes. Removing all 4 quarters of meat (legs) and the rest in a separate game bag (backstraps, tenderloins, neck meat, and other miscellaneous scraps).

The only two bulls the meat was weighed were 225# and 250# of deboned meat. Seems like three heavy, or four tolerable pack loads for me is the norm.

Boned out bull I killed in 2015 weighd 240

A cow elk that I killed back in 08 weighd 350 with no head, hooves,hide or guts....but full of bones